Huh???

With the release of the government jobs report, Joe Biden was out front touting that, despite rapidly rising unemployment, and millions of jobs lost, not to fear, that in fact, we have actually SAVED a million jobs. 600,000 thousand plus from stimulus money and 400,000 from tax breaks (?? Really, who got tax breaks?).

This is the ultimate Orwell. We have less jobs, but we saved jobs…. (yes I know the math and the O mans' argument. Doesn't change the absurdity of the statistics).

OK, right.

 

 

Btw, as an aside… rare kudos to the President for his trip to Dover. Anyone that criticizes a President for paying his respect to American heroes, even if it is for political gain, just doesn't get it. It was nice to see Obama look at acknowledge those that actually HAVE sacrificed for us all.

The Times finally catches up…. to me!

Those who read my posts regularly know that my disagreements with this President lie on both the left and the right. One of my areas of concern has been the single theme that that I feel runs through all of his decisions, the expansion of his own power.

One of the ways he has done that is a continuation, or increase, of Bush policies on secrecy, rendition, off shore torture, wiretapping, etc.

 

Today's NY Times FINALLY recognizes the arguments that the Obama administration has been making in both federal and overseas courts for 10 months now.

They do try and paint as much as possible as the fault of the Bushies, but they can no longer deny the policies of this administration almost a year in.

Here is today's lead NY Times editorial:

 

Editorial

Published: October 25, 2009

The Cover-Up Continues

The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration's expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush's cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama's cover-up.

We have had recent reminders of this dismaying retreat from Mr. Obama's passionate campaign promises to make a break with Mr. Bush's abuses of power, a shift that denies justice to the victims of wayward government policies and shields officials from accountability.

In Britain earlier this month, a two-judge High Court panel rejected arguments made first by the Bush team and now by the Obama team and decided to make public seven redacted paragraphs in American intelligence documents relating to torture allegations by a former prisoner at Guantánamo Bay. The prisoner, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British national, says he was tortured in Pakistan, Morocco and at a C.I.A.-run prison outside Kabul before being transferred to Guantánamo. He was freed in February.

To block the release of those paragraphs, the Bush administration threatened to cut its intelligence-sharing with Britain, an inappropriate threat that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton repeated. But the court concluded that the actual risk of harm to intelligence-sharing was minimal, given the close relationship between the two countries. The court also found a "compelling public interest" in disclosure, and said that nothing in the disputed seven paragraphs — a summary of evidence relating to the involvement of the British security services in Mr. Mohamed's ordeal — had anything to do with "secret intelligence."

The Obama administration has expressed unhappiness with the ruling, and the British government plans to appeal. But the court was clearly right in recognizing the importance of disclosure "for reasons of democratic accountability and the rule of law."

In the United States, the Obama administration is in the process of appealing a sound federal appellate court ruling last April in a civil lawsuit by Mr. Mohamed and four others. All were victims of the government's extraordinary rendition program, under which foreigners were kidnapped and flown to other countries for interrogation and torture.

In that case, the Obama administration has repeated a disreputable Bush-era argument that the executive branch is entitled to have lawsuits shut down whenever it makes a blanket claim of national security. The ruling rejected that argument and noted that the government's theory would "effectively cordon off all secret actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the C.I.A. and its partners from the demands and limits of the law."

The Obama administration has aggressively pursued such immunity in numerous other cases beyond the ones involving Mr. Mohamed. We do not take seriously the government's claim that it is trying to protect intelligence or avoid harm to national security.

Victims of the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation techniques," including Mr. Mohamed, have already spoken in harrowing detail about their mistreatment. The objective is to avoid official confirmation of wrongdoing that might be used in lawsuits against government officials and contractors, and might help create a public clamor for prosecuting those responsible. President Obama calls that a distracting exercise in "looking back." What it really is is justice.

In a similar vein, Mr. Obama did a flip-flop last May and decided to resist orders by two federal courts to release photographs of soldiers abusing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last week, just in time to avoid possible Supreme Court review of the matter, Congress created an exception to the Freedom of Information Act that gave Secretary of Defense Robert Gates authority to withhold the photos.

We share concerns about inflaming anti-American feelings and jeopardizing soldiers, but the best way to truly avoid that is to demonstrate that this nation has turned the page on Mr. Bush's shameful policies. Withholding the painful truth shows the opposite.

Like the insistence on overly broad claims of secrecy, it also avoids an important step toward accountability, which is the only way to ensure that the abuses of the Bush years are never repeated. We urge Mr. Gates to use his discretion under the new law to release the photos, sparing Americans more cover-up.

A shocking, but happy, development

In what can only be considered an amazing coincidence, two of the most biased, anti Israel/anti semitic organizations came out today with statements that literally stopped me in my tracks with their seeming change of direction.

Truth be told, one of them was not from the organization but rather its' founder.

Robert Bernstein, founder of Human Rights Watch, an organization that for the last decade has made a mockery of its' name, wrote an incredibly compelling piece in the NY Times today, condemning his own organization that he not only founded, but led for 20 years, in the harshest terms.

The article is reprinted below.

Perhaps even more amazing, is that an article condemning the British government for failing to support Israel in the UN Human Rights Council, was printed in the Guardian, perhaps Britains most stridently anti Israel mainstream paper. That article also appears below.

 

Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast

By ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN

Published: October 19, 2009

AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group's critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.

At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.

That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West and to encourage liberalization by drawing attention to dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and those in the Soviet gulag — and the millions in China's laogai, or labor camps.

When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.

Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.

Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch's Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.

Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch's criticism.

The organization is expressly concerned mainly with how wars are fought, not with motivations. To be sure, even victims of aggression are bound by the laws of war and must do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties. Nevertheless, there is a difference between wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally.

But how does Human Rights Watch know that these laws have been violated? In Gaza and elsewhere where there is no access to the battlefield or to the military and political leaders who make strategic decisions, it is extremely difficult to make definitive judgments about war crimes. Reporting often relies on witnesses whose stories cannot be verified and who may testify for political advantage or because they fear retaliation from their own rulers. Significantly, Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and an expert on warfare, has said that the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza "did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare." Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world. If it fails to do that, its credibility will be seriously undermined and its important role in the world significantly diminished.

Robert L. Bernstein, the former president and chief executive of Random House, was the chairman of Human Rights Watch from 1978 to 1998.

 

And Now, the Guardian piece:

A moral atrocity

Judge Goldstone has been suckered into letting war criminals use his name to pillory Israel

 

Harold Evans

The Guardian, Tuesday 20 October 2009

 

Aren't the British sickened by the moral confusions of their government? First, we have the weasel words to justify the unjustifiable release of the Lockerbie bomber. Now we have the sickening spectacle of Britain failing to stand by Israel, the only democracy with an independent judiciary in the entire region.

 

It was to be expected that the usual suspects of the risible UN human rights council would be eager to condemn Israel for war crimes in defending itself against Hamas. If you treat people as the Chinese do the Tibetans or Uighurs ("Off with their heads!"); or as the Russians eliminate Chechen dissidents; or as the Nigerians tolerate extrajudicial killings, the evictions of 800,000, rape and cruel treatment of prisoners; or as the Egyptians get prisoners to talk (torture) and the Saudis suppress half their population …

well, go through the practices of all 25 states voting to refer Israel to the security council for the Gaza war, and you have to acknowledge they know a lot about the abuse of humans. Anything to divert attention from their own atrocities.

 

Only six refused to join the farce – Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, Ukraine and the US. Britain didn't just abstain. It shirked voting at all (along with those beacons of civilisation Angola, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, and surprisingly, France).

 

Of course, here the fig leaf for being scared of dictators, especially oil-rich abusers, is the report by the South African judge Richard Goldstone. Poor Judge Goldstone now regrets how his good name has been used to single out Israel. The Swiss paper Le Temps reports him complaining that "This draft [UN human rights council] resolution saddens me … there is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report. I hope the council can modify the text." Fat hope.

 

The truth is he was suckered into lending his good name to a half-baked report – read its 575 pages and see. He said that, as a Jew himself, he was surprised to be invited. He shouldn't have been, and should never have accepted leadership of a commission whose terms of reference were designed to excuse the aggressor, Hamas, and punish the defender, Israel. The council's decision was to "dispatch an urgent, independent, international fact-finding mission … to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and [it] calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully co-operate with the mission".

 

Israel is not an "occupying power" in Gaza in either fact or international law. Four years ago it voluntarily pulled out all its soldiers and uprooted all its settlers. Here was a wonderful chance for Gaza to be the building block of a Palestinian state, and for Hamas to do what the Israelis did – take a piece of land and build a model state. They didn't. Instead of helping the desperate Palestinians, they conducted a religious war. In signing on for the UN mission – with others who had already condemned Israel – it seems to have escaped the judge that Hamas is committed not just to fight Israeli soldiers; it is a terrorist organisation hellbent on the destruction of the state of Israel. The terms of reference he accepted validate the torment of Israeli civilians. Hamas launched 7,000 rockets – every one intended to kill as many people as possible – then contemptuously

dismissed repeated warnings from Israel to stop or face the consequences.

 

The rockets were war crimes and ought to have been universally condemned as such. While new rockets hit Israel over many months there was no rush by the world's moralisers – including Britain – to censure Hamas, no urgency as there was in "world opinion" when Israel finally responded. Then Israel was immediately accused of a "disproportionate" response without anyone thinking: "What is a 'proportionate' attack against an enemy dedicated to exterminating your people?" A dedication to exterminating all of his?

 

Israel risked its own forces by imposing unprecedented restraint. In testimony volunteered to the human rights council (and ignored), Colonel Richard Kemp, a British commander in Bosnia and Afghanistan, stated: "The Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare." The "collateral damage" was less than the Nato allies inflicted on the Bosnians in the conflict with Yugoslavia.

 

No doubt there were blunders. A defensive war is still a war with all its suffering and destruction. But Hamas compounded its original war crime with another. It held its own people hostage. It used them as human shields. It regarded every (accidental) death as another bullet in the propaganda war. The Goldstone report won the gold standard of moral equivalence between the killer and the victim. Now Britain wins the silver. Who's cheering?

 

 

Breaking News!!!!!!! The New York Times and Obama discover there is, in fact, terrorism!! Shock!!

Gone largely unnoticed because of the incredible amount of news has been the decision by most newspapers and the Obama administration to stop using the term terrorist, or terrorism. Those who kill Israelis are now called "militants"

Funny, then, that with the bombing in Iran yesterday both the Times and the Obama administration rediscovered the magical words, terrorism, and terrorist.

Perhaps most offensive, even more so than the fact that Jews being killed no longer counts as a terrorist act, is that even a 13 year old American, Abigail Little, murdered in a Haifa bombing, did not generate the terrorist label for her attackers.

But when the leaders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the same group that was murdering Iranian voters in the streets just a few weeks ago, were the victims of a bombing, low and behold, both the Times and the administration, found the reason to use the word again.

My disgust knows no bounds.

 

Below, some wire service reports as reprinted from Tom Gross at the New Republic online:

Monday, October 19, 2009

 

 

Obama, Iranian Thugs, and the NY Times

By Tom Gross

National Review Online

 

 

It is amazing. It took many, many days for the administration of Nobel

peace-prize laureate Barack Obama to condemn the brutalization of

pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran last June (and even then it did so only

in the most tepid way), but by contrast it took just a couple of hours for

the Obama administration to condemn the attacks on the brutalizers

yesterday.

 

US condemns Iran bombing; denies involvement

Sun Oct 18, 2009

 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States on Sunday condemned a suicide bombing

that struck Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, and denied any involvement in

the attack.

 

"We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives,"

State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly said in a statement.

 

The attack reportedly killed Brig. Gen. Nourali Shoushtari, the lieutenant

commander of IRGC ground forces, the commanders of Sistan and Baluchistan

province, the Iranshahr Corps, the Sarbaz Corps and the Amiralmoemenin

Brigade, Iran's Fars News Agency said.

 

Meanwhile, the New York Times, which routinely refuses to call the blowing

up by Hamas and Fatah of Israeli children in buses, cafes and shopping malls

acts of terrorism - even when American children, such as 14-year-old

American Baptist Abigail Litle, are among the victims - had no problem

calling the political assassination of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary

Guards commanders "terrorism," as one can see from the email below.

 

The New York Times

Sun, October 18, 2009 - 9:01 AM ET

---

 

Five Iran Guard Commanders Are Killed in Bombings

 

Five commanders of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards

Corps were killed and dozens of others left dead and injured

in two terrorist bombings in the restive region of the

nation's southeastern frontier with Pakistan, according to

multiple Iranian state news agencies.

 

The coordinated attacks appeared to mark an escalation in

hostilities between Iran's leadership and one of the nation's

many disgruntled ethnic and religious minorities, in this

case the Baluchis.

Truth, from the Brits....

Delivered by Col. Richard Kemp

 

Col. Kemp was the director of British forces in Afghanistan, and also served in command positions in Iraq, for NATO and even for UN Peace keeping forces.

 

Judge Goldstone refused, I repeat, refused, to hear his testimony before writing his "report".

 

Kemp tried to testify in front of the UN Human Rights Commission as well during their hearing on Goldstones report. They also refused, until UN Watch insisted. Here is his testimony.

 

Thank you, Mr. President.

 

 

I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK Government's Joint Intelligence Committee. Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: [B]During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.[/B]

 

Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population. Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents. The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks. Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes. More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas' way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets. And I say this again: the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

 

Thank you, Mr. President.

More Obama magic…. Again… again

Conveniently buried on page 4 of the Behind the Times yesterday was an interesting ditty that of course got no coverage. It seems that in her meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister Secretary of State Clinton was told in no uncertain terms that Russia would NOT agree to further or increased sanctions on the Iranians.

 

Funny, but the Obamites were touting the new engagement, the alienation of the Poles and Czechs, as having guaranteed Russian cooperation in our efforts to denuke Iran.

Wonder how they can explain this. Oh, wait, they don't have to because no one will know about it!!

Health Care Hocus Pocus

Many of you who read me regularly know that in principal, I support health care reform. It is one of those areas, however, that I admit to not having any real answers. What I do, however, is attempt to make honest assessments of the bills currently working their way through Congress.

 

That is why I provided, in an earlier post, the letter sent to Charlie Rangel of the House Ways and Means Committee by the CBO.

 

There are four essential facts that have been totally ignored by the mainstream media with the bill just sent out of the Senate Finance committee:

1. It requires EVERY American to obtain health insurance. If you do not, you are going to be fined. This is one of the ways that the bill, or Obama, plans to pay for it. It is, as you can see, the first piece of hocus pocus. Even with aid for those who can't afford it, it is a penalty.
   
2. The "Savings" that have been much ballyhooed come from one principal area. It is one of the truly disgusting bookkeeping tricks that Congress has used in many other instances tgo cover up enormous shortfalls in Medicare and Social Security. They have built in an enormous increase in Medicare payments the first year to doctors, AND THEN WRITTEN IN THAT THEY WILL LATER ELIMINATE THESE. That difference is the supposed "savings".
   

   The Problem here is that NEVER in its' history has Congress actually done this.
   

3. The other way the bill is to paid for is with enormous tax increases. On "high income" individuals and more, on businesses. What they have not discussed, however, is that the fees and tax increases start in YEAR ONE. The benefits of the Plan start in YEAR SEVEN. Once the plan actually kicks in with the benefits, it runs a deficit every year. So, long after Obama is gone, his legacy of ENORMOUS, UNMANAGEABLE deficit spending will continue.
   
4. Of the 7 bills currently working their way around Congress, the Baucus/Senate Finance bill is the cheapest. And yet, more than $800,000,000,000 – that's $800 BILLION dollars, is being spent to insure between 17 and 25 million additional Americans. You do the math on the cost of that insurance for each of those folks.

Worth Your Time…

A TV note for those of you that get the History Channel.

I've been watching a show called "3 Shots that Changed the America" tonight.

It is being repeated several times and is really worth watching.

It is a no commentary retracing of the assassination of President Kennedy up to the murder of Oswald, using film clips, reports, radio broadcasts from the day of the assassination.

It includes the original APB sent out over the Dallas police radio, the original discussion with the doctors and other immediate reactions.

What is most fascinating, of course, is how the police reports and the doctors comments (regarding Governor Connelly, his doctor, immediately after the surgery came out and said "he was shot by one shot from behind and above") belie the conspiracy theories, but that the "man on the street" all jump to that conclusion.

In fact, the original report immediately says a shooter was seen in the window of the book depository by a white male and black youth.

What makes it so fascinating are so many of the news clips and live news coverage that have rarely, if ever been seen before.

What was fascinating to me, as an historian, was the seeming lack of knowledge of how often attempts have been made on, and even been successful, against the President.

Besides the two that everyone knows (Lincoln and Kennedy), James Garfield and William McKinley were also assassinated.

In addition two other Presidents who died in office were rumored to have been assassinated as well, possibly making the total 6.
Zachary Taylor and Warren G. Harding.

While Taylor's body was actually exhumed to test for arsenic poisoning, it was decided that the level of arsenic found in his hair was not sufficient to have killed him.

However, Harding died in mysterious circumstances, with the Surgeon General specifically not agreeing with the common perception that he died of a heart attack. There was no autopsy allowed by Harding's wife, who many believed to have been involved because of Harding's infidelity. Harding's administration was beset by scandal and there have long been rumours that in addition to his wife, other members of the cabinet may have been involved in order to change the discussion.

This theory still has sway among many historians.

However, just during my lifetime, EVERY President has had fairly significant attempts against them. Most of you won't remember many of these but here are some of the more famous.

Nixon - February 22, 1974: Samuel Byck apparently planned to kill Nixon by crashing a commercial airliner into the White House.[6] Once he had hijacked the plane on the ground, he was informed that it could not take off with the wheel blocks still in place. He shot the pilot and copilot, then was shot by an officer through the plane's door window before killing himself.

Ford - There were 2 significant attempts on Ford, one of which I remember vividly and frightened me quite a bit. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme who had been a member of the Manson Family was wrestled to the ground moments before Ford shook her hand in a crowd in Sacramento. She was holding a Colt .45 pistol. I remember thinking that the Manson reach would never end.
Interestingly, Fromme was just paroled this year, 2 months ago.

Sarah Jane Moore actually fired at Ford with a pistol from a short distance but a bystander saw her in the process and grabbed her arm causing her to miss.

Carter - A man was caught with a pistol outside an auditorium just before a speech and alleged that he was part of a conspiracy to kill Carter. He was released for insufficient evidence.

Reagan - obviously everyone remembers the Hinckley attempt. My memories were of staying up all night waiting to hear what happened and whether Reagan would survive.

Bush - Many do not remember the attempt by Sadaam Hussein and his security forces just after Bush left office, but a car bomb was smuggled into Kuwait but was discovered by the Kuwaiti authorities.

Of course, the significance of this attempt was that it caused President Clinton to pass the "Iraqi Regime Change act" making it the law of the land that Sadaam be overthrown or otherwise removed from office.

Clinton also launched a missile attack against Iraq's intelligence headquarters in retaliation.

Clinton - There were two major attempts on Clinton. In one, a Cessna was actually flown into the White House, missing the building and crashing on the lawn, but the Clinton's were not there at the time.

Later that year, 29 shots from an automatic rifle were fired into a crowd in the White House with the would be assassin being tackled to the ground by tourists.

Finally, Ramzi Youssef, who would later be convicted in the Trade Tower bombing, planned to blow up Clinton's motorcade in Novenber of 1994 in the Phillipines but aborted the plan.

Bush - There were 3 very significant attempts. The first, the firing of a sophisticated handgun from just outside the fence of the White House. The would be assasin was shot by the Secret Service.

Next, in something that has received little attention, was a mysterious group who claimed to have an "interview" with Bush while he was in his hotel in Florida that morning.

Two facts emerged later. One was that Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 plot had spent considerable time "casing" that hotel, and the second was that the attempt was identical to the assassination method used to kill the leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, Ahmed Massoud, by Al Qaeda.

The next attempt was in Tbilisi, Georgia, when he was giving a speech with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. A live grenade with the pin removed was rolled on stage. Luckily for the two men, the grenade was wrapped tightly in a handkerchief which effectively kept the firing pin from deploying before it was discovered.

And now you know why I love history!

The MTV Generation, or 88 minutes

I debated what to call this post and in fact, whether to even write it. What's it about? The Nobel Peace Prize of course.

I won't entertain you with a list of previous winners, most of whom barely measure a footnote to history, or even some wonderful choices like

Kofi Annan, or even better Yasser Arafat who actually made his famous speech at the UN with his handgun at his side.

 

Rather, the title refers to today's society, largely influenced by MTV and the quick cuts of music videos, and instant gratification.

 

By now, many of you may have heard that Obama was President for all of 11 days when the nomination period for the Peace Prize ended.

That means, that he was considered and nominated in that time. 11 days. Think about this.

 

What's fascinating is that I spend so much of my time teaching my students that their biggest problem is their need to SLOOOOOOW down.

 

We read too fast without understanding. We use umms, and likes because we can't stand the sound of silence when we actually allow ourselves

to think. No silent moment of reflection allowed.

 

The fact that we get fooled by sophistic speaking devices such as "of course we all agree…."; "no one would argue with…"; "it's clear to everyone that…"; "of course we all understand…"

 

I teach my students that they need to be the ones in the room who say "I don't understand, explain it to ME"; "I don't' see, show me".

 

I'm sure you've heard the theories about internationalism and the idea of giving the award as a slap to Bush.

I won't opine on those things as my views are pretty well known.

 

I'll simply leave you with the statements, not of Ron Paul, or Lech Walesa or any one else who finds this a joke, rather here are the words of Joe Klein of Time Magazine, perhaps Obama's biggest supporter in the Mainstream media.

"but let's face it: this prize is premature to the point of ridiculousness. It continues a pattern that holds some peril for Obama: he is celebrated for who he is not, and for who he might potentially be, rather than for what he has actually done. If he doesn't provide results that justify the award, this Nobel will prove a millstone come election time. "

 

More “change” i.e More secrecy…again

As I have pointed out here frequently, the king of Presidential secrecy, HRH Obama, has continuously

reduced transparency in government, flying in the face of his campaign promises.

 

He has done it once again. The justice department is currently telling the federal courts that when reporters

are prosecuted in cases regarding government leaks, it is NOT the courts to decide whether the reporter has to

reveal his/her sources, but rather the court should take the word of the government.

 

In other words, what they are arguing is when we want to arrest and jail a reporter, they have no right to

have their case heard in the courts, rather the judge has to take MY word for it.

 

Change you can believe in, again.

That Obama Magic

The defeat of Chicago's bid for the Olympics is being played by the party partisans as one would expect.

For me, it is a clear reflection of statements coming out of Europe since last weeks disastrous UN fiasco.

It is also just another example of one of the great lies perpetrated by Obama during the election as to the relative like or dislike of us by the world.

Apparently, being the only President to ever make an Olympic bid, just didn't have the force of personality that the "O" thought it would.

Guess he's not quite as persuasive as he would believe.

More, he so angered the Europeans, who dominate the IOC, with his weak statements about Iran even as the Brits and French were coming down hard, that it was all but inevitable.

Even more important, and of course NOT covered by the mainstream press, is the fact that after the meeting on Thursday with the Iranians, the administration and the press portrayed it as a victory.

Funny, because the lead Iranian negotiator came out of the meeting and said the nuclear issue was NOT EVEN DISCUSSED.

The Iranians than backed out of the statements that they had made last week, long before this meeting, that they would let the IAEA in to look at this recently revealed military facility and now say that they won't.

Talk, talk, talk, tick, tick tick....